“I (might be) just that good”: Honest and deceptive impression management in employment interviews

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 597-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua S. Bourdage ◽  
Nicolas Roulin ◽  
Rima Tarraf
Keyword(s):  
Impression Management ◽  
Employment Interviews

Exploring Boundaries of the Effects of Applicant Impression Management Tactics in Job Interviews

2005 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei-Chi Tsai ◽  
Chien-Cheng Chen ◽  
Su-Fen Chiu
Keyword(s):  
Impression Management ◽  
Employment Interviews ◽  
Job Interviews ◽  
Customer Contact ◽  
Job Openings ◽  
Impression Management Tactics ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Management Tactics

Applicant impression management tactics have been shown to positively influence interviewer evaluations. This study extends previous research by examining the moderating roles of interview structure, customer-contact requirement, and interview length in real employment interviews for actual job openings. Results from 151 applicants of 25 firms showed that the more structured the interview, the weaker the relationship between applicant nonverbal tactics and interviewer evaluation. In addition, when the extent of customer contact required for a job was relatively low, the influence of applicant self-focused tactics on interviewer evaluation was minimized. Furthermore, when the interview was of longer duration, the effects of applicant self-focused tactics became insignificant.

Interviewers' perceptions of impression management in employment interviews

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Roulin ◽  
Adrian Bangerter ◽  
Julia Levashina
Keyword(s):  
Field Study ◽  
Impression Management ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Employment Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Image Protection ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Image Creation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose – Applicants often use impression management (IM) in employment interviews, and such tactics can considerably influence interviewers' evaluations of their performance. Yet, little research has examined interviewers' perceptions of such behaviors. This paper aims to examine if interviewers' perceptions of various IM behaviors converge with applicants' self-reports and the impact of interviewers' IM perceptions on interview outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – Findings are based on data from a field study of 164 real employment interviews, conducted in recruiting agencies in Switzerland. Findings – Interviewers' perceptions do not converge with self-reported applicant IM. Interviewers' perceptions of self-promotion and perceived applicant transparency are positively related to interview evaluations, while perceptions of slight image creation tactics are negatively related to interview evaluations. Perceptions of deceptive ingratiation, image protection, and extensive image creation were not related to evaluations. Practical implications – It may not be that easy for interviewers to identify when applicants use IM, partly because they may be prone to overconfidence in their judgments and may (wrongly) believe they can “see through the applicant”. Also, what may actually matter in interviews is not the impression applicants think they are making, but interviewers' perceptions of applicant IM. Originality/value – This study investigates interviewers' perceptions in addition to applicants' self-reports of five types of IM in real employment interviews, and how such perceptions are related to interview outcome.

Applicants' Preference for Impression Management Tactic in Employment Interviews by Transportation Security Administration

2009 ◽  
Vol 104 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph N. Scudder ◽  
Kevin G. Lamude
Keyword(s):  
Impression Management ◽  
Employment Interviews ◽  
Transportation Security ◽  
Transportation Security Administration ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Perceptual Abilities ◽  
Impression Management Tactics ◽  
Management Tactics

Following past findings on employment interviews, this study hypothesized applicants would have a preference for using self-promoting tactics of impression management over other focuses. Self-reports of impression management tactics were collected from 124 applicants who had interviews for screener positions with the Transportation Security Administration. Contrary to the hypothesis, analysis indicated participants reported they used more ingratiation tactics attempting to praise the interviewer than self-promotion tactics which focused on their own accomplishments. Special qualifications for security jobs which required well-developed perceptual abilities and the controlling structure of the interview context were perhaps responsible for present results differing from prior findings.

scholarly journals Does It Take Two to Tango? Examining How Applicants and Interviewers Adapt Their Impression Management to Each Other

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annika Wilhelmy ◽  
Nicolas Roulin ◽  
Timothy G. Wingate
Keyword(s):  
Observational Study ◽  
Impression Management ◽  
Field Data ◽  
Response Pattern ◽  
Signaling Theory ◽  
Interpersonal Influence ◽  
Employment Interviews ◽  
Dynamic Interactions ◽  
Within Subjects ◽  
Adaptive Nature

Abstract Although research has long examined applicants’ use of impression management (IM) behaviors in the interview, interviewers’ IM has only been recently investigated, and no research has attempted to combine both. The aim of this research was to examine whether and how applicants and interviewers adapt their IM to one another. To answer this question, we bring together IM, signaling theory, and the concept of adjacency pairs from linguistics, and carried out two studies. Study 1 was an observational study with field data (N = 30 interviews including a total of 6290 turns of speech by interviewers and applicants). Results showed that both applicants and interviewers are more likely to engage in IM in a way that can be considered as a “preferred” (vs. “dispreferred”) response pattern. That is, self-focused IM is particularly likely to occur as a response to other-focused IM, other-focused IM as a response to self-focused IM, and job/organization-focused IM as a response to job/organization-focused IM. In study 2, we used a within-subjects design to experimentally manipulate interviewer IM and examine its impact on (N = 120) applicants’ IM behaviors during the interview. Applicants who engaged more in “preferred” IM responses were evaluated as performing better in the interview by external raters. However, “preferred” IM responses were not associated with any other interview outcomes. Altogether, our findings highlight the adaptive nature of interpersonal influence in employment interviews, and call for more research examining the dynamic interactions between interviewers and applicants.

FAIRNESS OF IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT IN EMPLOYMENT INTERVIEWS: A CROSS-COUNTRY STUDY OF THE ROLE OF EQUITY AND MACHIAVELLIANISM

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (8) ◽  
pp. 747-768 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joana Lopes ◽  
Clive Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Impression Management ◽  
Employment Interview ◽  
Employment Interviews ◽  
Job Interviews ◽  
Fairness Perceptions ◽  
Country Study ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
The Uk

This study focused on the use of Impression Management (IM) in employment interviews from the perspective of interviewees and investigated possible antecedents of their perceptions regarding what is fair interviewee IM. Its rationale was largely based on the tenets of equity theory (Adams, 1963; 1965). Data from 163 potential interviewees (college students) approached in the UK and Portugal showed that, as expected, they tended to perceive as fair interviewee IM those IM tactics they also saw as fair for interviewers to use. Gender did not predict IM fairness perceptions, but IM use by the organization, Machiavellianism and Country did. Results regarding the influence of experience of job interviews were inconclusive. Finally, based on these findings, suggestions are made for further research and for the education of both interviewees and interviewers regarding behavior in the employment interview.

Individual Differences in the Name Similarity Effect

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-118
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Howard ◽  
Roger A. Kerin
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Impression Management ◽  
Interactive Effect ◽  
Purchase Intentions ◽  
Brand Attitude ◽  
Self Monitoring ◽  
Similarity Effect ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Usage Context

The name similarity effect is the tendency to like people, places, and things with names similar to our own. Although many researchers have examined name similarity effects on preferences and behavior, no research to date has examined whether individual differences exist in susceptibility to those effects. This research reports the results of two experiments that examine the role of self-monitoring in moderating name similarity effects. In the first experiment, name similarity effects on brand attitude and purchase intentions were found to be stronger for respondents high, rather than low, in self-monitoring. In the second experiment, the interactive effect observed in the first study was found to be especially true in a public (vs. private) usage context. These findings are consistent with theoretical expectations of name similarity effects as an expression of egotism manifested in the image and impression management concerns of high self-monitors.

The Two Components of Social Desirability and their Relations to Resting Frontal Brain Asymmetry

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelia A. Pauls ◽  
Jan Wacker ◽  
Nicolas W. Crost
Keyword(s):  
Impression Management ◽  
Big Five ◽  
Hemispheric Asymmetry ◽  
Incentive Motivation ◽  
Blink Rate ◽  
Frontal Brain ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Opposite Sex ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Α Band

Abstract. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationships between resting frontal hemispheric asymmetry (FHA) in the low α band (8-10.25 Hz) and the two components of socially desirable responding, i.e., self-deceptive enhancement (SDE) and impression management (IM), in an opposite-sex encounter. In addition, Big Five facets, self-reports of emotion, and spontaneous eye blink rate (BR), a noninvasive indicator of functional dopamine activity, were assessed. SDE as well as IM were related to relatively greater right-than-left activity in the low α band (i.e., relative left frontal activation; LFA) and to self-reported positive affect (PA), but only SDE was related to BR. We hypothesized that two independent types of motivational approach tendencies underlie individual differences in FHA and PA: affiliative motivation represented by IM and agentic incentive motivation represented by SDE. Whereas the relationship between SDE and PA was mediated by BR, the relationship between SDE and FHA was not.

A Meta-Analysis of Interviews and Cognitive Ability

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 157-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip L. Roth ◽  
Allen I. Huffcutt
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Ability ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Incremental Validity ◽  
Employment Interviews ◽  
Moderator Analysis ◽  
The Future ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Meta Analyses ◽  
The Relationship

The topic of what interviews measure has received a great deal of attention over the years. One line of research has investigated the relationship between interviews and the construct of cognitive ability. A previous meta-analysis reported an overall corrected correlation of .40 ( Huffcutt, Roth, & McDaniel, 1996 ). A more recent meta-analysis reported a noticeably lower corrected correlation of .27 ( Berry, Sackett, & Landers, 2007 ). After reviewing both meta-analyses, it appears that the two studies posed different research questions. Further, there were a number of coding judgments in Berry et al. that merit review, and there was no moderator analysis for educational versus employment interviews. As a result, we reanalyzed the work by Berry et al. and found a corrected correlation of .42 for employment interviews (.15 higher than Berry et al., a 56% increase). Further, educational interviews were associated with a corrected correlation of .21, supporting their influence as a moderator. We suggest a better estimate of the correlation between employment interviews and cognitive ability is .42, and this takes us “back to the future” in that the better overall estimate of the employment interviews – cognitive ability relationship is roughly .40. This difference has implications for what is being measured by interviews and their incremental validity.

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